The Fawcett Avenue Conscripts are a group of table-top wargamers who get together every Thursday night to enjoy some gaming, some beer and a few chuckles courtesy of our hobby.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

28mm Austrian Reinforcements

28mm Austrian figures from Wargames Foundry

Hello again folks - my apologies for the slow posting activity recently. I wish I could say it was because of nice weather, but winter continues to cling to the prairies like the clenched fist of an ancient swamp hag. I'm pretty much at the point where I think we need to build a ziggurat and sacrifice a local weather forecaster in an attempt to appease the gods - after all, I hear the Aztecs enjoyed some good weather in their time.

Early stages of the painting process

Finished and waiting for basing

In fact I have been diverted because of a fun reason - the bonkers NHL half-season has given the Winnipeg Jets (our local NHL ice-hockey team) a truckload of home games recently, so I've been at the rink cheering night after night. It's been lots of fun, particularly as the Jets have scraped together a nice little winning streak and still cling to a remote possibility of making the playoffs.

But I've still been painting a bit in between games, working on my 6mm War of Spanish Succession project. I've also added a few more 28mm Napoleonic Austrians. Curt and I play "grand manner" style 28mm Napoleonics with larger units. In the case of the Austrians, noted for their very large battalions in the field, that means really, really big units - 40 infantry castings for a large foot battalion.

I like the look of a "firing" unit - good break from all of the marching ones

"March attack" poses make up the second rank

Back in Curt's 2011/2012 Painting Challenge I had finished off a 32-casting Austrian battalion in firing poses - smaller than usual. There is nothing wrong with this (and in fact I doubt that every Austrian battalion in the field was as large as gamers tend to think) but seeing this one unit on the shelf 8-figures short from the others kind of annoyed me (yes - I'm nuts). When I found a few more of the Foundry figures in a firing pose I decided to round off the unit.

Here the new recruits have joined their parent formation

Ready for a battlefield stroll with the Hapsburgs

I had hoped to paint a number of 28mm Austrians as part of Curt's most recent painting challenge, but in the end I mostly concentrated on figures for the Sudan. The upshot is that I have a bunch of other 28mm Austrian castings ready to go for painting, so I hope I can add a couple more units over the summer. If summer every actually shows up...